Angela Merkel Quotes

As she had done when she introduced the US president in Berlin, she addressed him publicly with the informal du for the first time since the NSA controversy in 2013.

Obama’s next words captured the attention of the world and the amusement of those present. As he wagged his finger at the crowd, he scolded, ‘So stop it, all of you. I know you have to find something to report on, but we have more than enough problems out there without manufacturing problems.

Let me make two remarks. First I concentrate on the task ahead for 2016. I’m quite busy with that—thank you very much. And I’m looking with great interest in the American election campaign.’ For the second time during their press conference, the clicking sounds of the cameras was deafening.

At one point, approximately halfway through her remarks, Merkel stated in German something about ‘being able to greet the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama,’ and an overly ambitious Obama, who perhaps thought that was his cue, headed toward the podium.  Perhaps catching the president’s movement out of the corner of her eye, Merkel thought quickly, and without even looking up from her notes, she told the excited American president, in English, ‘Not yet, dear Mr. President, dear Barack Obama.’ Obama sheepishly returned to his seat to allow the chancellor to finish her speech.

In her usual manner, Merkel spoke in German. It is worth pointing out, however, that before the translator had an opportunity to convert her statements to English, Obama gave the chancellor and the press a big smile, saying, ‘I think what she said was good. I’m teasing.’ The laughter in the room drowned out the sounds of the cameras clicking and flashing, with Merkel’s giggle and smile among the loudest.

Then, in an unusual moment, she grew emotional, which left little doubt about the level of profound respect and admiration Merkel had for her American colleague: ‘So eight years are coming to a close.  This is the last visit of (President) Barack Obama to our country…I am very glad that he chose Germany as one of the stopovers on this trip…Thank you for the reliable friendship and partnership you demonstrated in very difficult hours of our relationship. So let me again pay tribute to what we’ve been able to achieve, to what we discussed, to what we were able to bring about in difficult hours.

The skin around my eyes was becoming, even as I watched, a mass of wrinkles; chin and jowls were sagging, neck like a turkey, marionette lines rushing from my mouth to my chin in manner of Angela Merkel. As I stared I could almost seamy hair turning into a tight grey perm. It had finally happened. I was an old lady.

In her experience, language cannot be trusted. Words are weapons to be deployed cautiously.

Angela Merkel in Private is even more miserable than she looks in Public.

This is her power move: letting an alpha male keep talking and waiting patiently as he self-destructs.

Every person who comes is a human being and has the right to be treated as such.

Angela Merkel zitiere ich ja am liebsten wörtlich, ich hab noch keine bessere Möglichkeit gefunden diese Frau zu beleidigen.

The Russian contribution to peace in Ukraine is not sufficient. [German Chancellor commenting on 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea]

A woman in power has more urgent business to attend to than her ego.

Never hate your enemies; it affects your judgment.

Islam is part of Germany.

There is strength in calm”).

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. Thomas Mann, German-American author (1875–1955)

You are only able to love in the first place if you love yourself, if you believe in yourself, if you know yourself. Only then can you approach the other.… Love can only come if you are clear about who you are.

It’s a seminal moment in the history of Germany and Europe. Stopping at the Elbe is not a normal military-political decision; it’s one dictated by higher powers. Crossing the Rhine is fine; but the Elbe marks the end of reasonable ambition.

What does freedom mean to me? This question has occupied me my entire life. Naturally, politically, because freedom needs democratic conditions, without democracy there is no freedom, no rule of law, no protection of human rights. But this question also occupies me on another level. Freedom, for me, is finding out where my own limits are, and pushing my own limits. Freedom is for me not to stop learning, not to have to stand still but to be allowed to continue, even after leaving politics.” - Angela Merkel

He rated Angela Merkel as the best leader in the West and considered Vladimir Putin one of the best leaders worldwide. He explained that leaders must be judged within the context of the circumstances they encounter and then went on to share his view of how difficult it is to lead Russia and why he thought Putin was doing it well.

A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.

Be self-confident. Don’t let others take the bread

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” —Marie Curie (1867–1934)

If everyone just sweeps outside their door, the whole village will be clean,” Merkel said sometimes, quoting Goethe.

Wir schaffen das,

With statistics, graphs, and charts, the country's highest-ranking soccer fan proposed a training plan for the speechless coach.

Vielfalt und Unterschiede sind Ausdruck gelebter Freiheit.

Economists have another way of measuring the “centrality” of a node in a network: rather than simply counting the number of connections, they take into account how many connections each of those connections has, and so on. If I have one hundred friends and you have only ten, I might appear better connected than you. But if your ten friends include people who are themselves very well connected—Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Justin Bieber—you may be more influential than me after all. (Google’s page-ranking system works in a similar way: it measures not only how many sites link to a page, but how many sites link to those sites, and so on. Being linked to once by the New York Times counts for more than being linked to by a dozen unknown blogs.)

The Snowden affair gave Putin the evidence that confirmed his complaints about American hegemony and perfidy, the hypocrisy of the three American administrations he had now dealt with. Snowden’s disclosures tarnished President Obama’s reputation and undercut his foreign policy, souring relations even with allies like Germany, whose chancellor, Angela Merkel, learned that her own telephone conversations had been tapped. It

La gran mayoría de los dirigentes mundiales son hombres, y su codicia no tiene límites. Y lo mismo les pasa a las pocas mujeres que ejercen el poder desde el patriarcado: cuando ellas gobiernan, el sistema de explotación permanece intacto. Margaret Tatcher, Angela Merkel o todas las lideresas de la derecha española, son ejemplos de mujeres que ejercen su poder patriarcal de forma semejante a como lo hacen sus homólogos hombres.

Her description of a perfect day sounds perfectly ordinary: “I will sleep long, have a relaxed breakfast. Then I’ll go out for some fresh air, chat with my husband or with friends. I might go to the theater, to the opera, or listen to a concert. If I’m rested, I might read a good book. And I would cook dinner. I like cooking!” These are the dreams of a person who had not been truly free for the last sixteen years. Though no longer young, Merkel is spry enough to enjoy the simplest of pleasures: country rambles, leisurely meals with (nonpolitical) friends, and music and books instead of charts, polls, and position papers. These pleasures will not replace the satisfaction of outsmarting a foe with her legendary stamina and command of facts. But, never one to ruminate over feelings, she will observe her own reaction to this new life with a scientist’s curiosity. In the short term, she is likely to spend time near her childhood home in the province of Brandenburg, where she first learned to love nature and which she still regards as her Heimat, or spiritual home. She’ll travel, too. Among her stated dreams is to fly over the Andes Mountains—an idealized destination; a metaphor for freedom.

On 17 July 2015 the German chancellor Angela Merkel was confronted by a teenage Palestinian refugee girl from Lebanon, whose family was seeking asylum in Germany but faced imminent deportation. The girl, Reem, told Merkel in fluent German that ‘It’s really very hard to watch how other people can enjoy life and you yourself can’t. I don’t know what my future will bring.’ Merkel replied that ‘politics can be tough’ and explained that there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and Germany cannot absorb them all. Stunned by this no-nonsense reply, Reem burst into tears. Merkel proceeded to stroke the desperate girl on the back, but stuck to her guns.

Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organized themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there a thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago?

More politically, Medusa has become shorthand for a particular brand of strong female agency perceived as aggressive or ‘unladylike’. Marie Antoinette was depicted with snake-like hair in French seventeenth-century cartoons, while in the early twentieth century, anti-suffragette postcards likened the protesters to the monster. During the 2016 American election campaign, the image of Hillary Clinton’s snake-bedecked, raging head being cut off by her Republican rival Donald Trump – compared to Perseus – appeared on unofficial merchandise. Similarly, another strong female leader, German chancellor Angela Merkel, has found herself depicted as a Gorgon. These portrayals reinforce a millennia-old message from men to women: keep your mouth shut or we’ll shut it for you.

Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t all a giant con, the gaggle of letters after his name, the dinners with Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi, the notes from Gordon Brown and Larry Summers. They were like those fake Oscar statues bought at ‘World’s Greatest Photocopier’ or ‘Best Lightbulb Changer in the Galaxy.’ When he died only his writing would remain, until it was rendered obsolete when oil and coal ran out and the species established its first settlement on Mars. Professor Chandra was the foremost trade economist in the world, could phone any finance minister in any country at any time and have them take his call. And yet, what if he had only convinced himself that the world envied him? What if, in reality, they felt sorry for him with his swollen ego and his Savile Row suits and his sculpted tri-continental accent?

Another young woman, an employee of the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, was on her way home from a visit to a sauna when the news of the night inspired her to head for Bornholmer. Her name was Angela Merkel. She had chosen a career in chemistry, not in politics, but that night would change her life. Merkel had been born in Hamburg in 1954, and even though she and her immediate family had moved to East Germany in 1957, she still maintained contact with an aunt in her hometown. On the night of November 9, once she made it to West Berlin, Merkel would call that aunt to say that she had crossed the border. It would be the first of many nights of crossing the East-West divide for Merkel, in both literal and figurative terms.72 She would soon become active in the new East German party Democratic Awakening, which would enter into an election alliance with the CDU, eventually bringing Merkel into the latter party’s ranks. As a member of the CDU, Merkel would start her phenomenal rise to the chancellorship of united Germany.73

You find nothing like that among humans. Yes, human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries. Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there 1,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago? The (unratified) Preamble of the European Constitution begins by stating that it draws inspiration ‘from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which “have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law’.3 This may easily give one the impression that European civilisation is defined by the values of human rights, democracy, equality and freedom. Countless speeches and documents draw a direct line from ancient Athenian democracy to the present-day EU, celebrating 2,500 years of European freedom and democracy. This is reminiscent of the proverbial blind man who takes hold of an elephant’s tail and concludes that an elephant is a kind of brush. Yes, democratic ideas have been part of European culture for centuries, but they were never the whole. For all its glory and impact, Athenian democracy was a half-hearted experiment that survived for barely 200 years in a small corner of the Balkans. If European civilisation for the past twenty-five centuries has been defined by democracy and human rights, what are we to make of Sparta and Julius Caesar, of the Crusaders and the conquistadores, of the Inquisition and the slave trade, of Louis XIV and Napoleon, of Hitler and Stalin? Were they all intruders from some foreign civilisation?

These are a substantial number of “they” who once a year meet to deliberate the fate of national economies and, hence, entire populations. Many of them also believe in the mandate of eugenics, the practice of improving the human race to include reducing the population. Know that we do not have the names of every attendee. Only those who authorize the release of their names get mentioned in the public media. Daniel Estulin, author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, wrote that the group’s membership and meeting participants have represented a “who’s who” of the world power elite with familiar names like David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld, Rupert Murdoch, other heads of state, influential senators, congressmen, and parliamentarians, Pentagon and NATO brass, members of European royalty, selected media figures, and invited others. Such invitees have included President Obama along with many of his top officials. Estulin said that also represented at Bilderberg meetings are leading figures from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), IMF, World Bank, the Trilateral Commission, EU, and powerful central bankers from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the Bank of England. David Rockefeller, the head of the Rockefeller family financial empire, is believed to have been a leading Bilderberg attendee for years. Other wealthy elite members merely send representatives.

The one person who didn’t seem enthusiastic about giving a speech in Berlin was Obama. When Favreau and I talked to him about it, he didn’t offer much beyond suggesting we use Berlin’s story to talk about what we were proposing in our own foreign policy. Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected a request from the campaign for the speech to take place at the Brandenburg Gate, where Reagan had called on Gorbachev to tear down the wall, saying that the venue should be reserved for an actual president. When he learned about this, Obama was embarrassed and annoyed. “I never said I wanted to give a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate,” he snapped. It spoke to a larger dynamic in the campaign: While Obama was often blamed for the cult of personality growing up around him—arty posters, celebrity anthems, and lavish settings for his events—he was rarely responsible for it, and worried that we were raising expectations too high in a world that has a way of resisting change. “Before he left for Afghanistan, he read a draft of the speech and told us he was satisfied with it—“You could put this speech on the teleprompter and I’d be fine,” he said—but I was hoping for more than that. I was hoping for edits that would elevate the speech and make it more than a summation of our worldview. The shift to a foreign audience hadn’t been hard, as Obama’s message about working across races “and religions, his preference for diplomacy over war, his embrace of the science of climate change, and his recognition that the world needed to confront issues beyond terrorism were going to be well received in Germany. I kept looking for the phrase or two that might elevate that message, summarizing it in a way that could convey the same sense of common mission that Kennedy and Reagan had evoked.

Just as the violation of Angela Merkel’s rights is a massive scandal and the violation of 80 million Germans is a nonstory.

As Angela Merkel says, Russia cannot simply be allowed to invade its neighbours and shift Europe’s borders with impunity.

These policies would come back to haunt Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse. Instead of the vigorous, countercyclical fiscal, monetary, and debt relief policies called for in the wake of a 1929-scale crash, Europe’s institutions promoted austerity reminiscent of the post–World War I era. The debt and deficit limits of Maastricht precluded strong fiscal stimulus, and the government of Angela Merkel resisted emergency waivers. Germany, an export champion, which in effect had an artificially cheap currency in the euro, profited from other nations’ misery. Germany could prosper by running a large export surplus (equal to almost 10 percent of its GDP), but not all nations can have surpluses. The European Central Bank, which reported to nineteen different national masters that used the euro, had neither the tools nor the mandate available to the US Federal Reserve. The ECB did cut interest rates, but it did not engage in the scale of credit creation pursued by the Fed. The Germans successfully resisted any Europeanizing of the sovereign debt of the EU’s weaker nations, pressing them instead to regain the confidence of capital markets by deflating. Sovereign debt financing by the ECB went mainly to repay private and state creditors, not to rekindle growth. Thus did “fortress Europe,” which advocates and detractors circa 1981 both saw as a kind of social democratic alternative to the liberal capitalism of the Anglo-Saxon nations, replicate the worst aspects of a global system captive to the demands of speculative private capital. The Maastricht constitution not only internalized those norms, but enforced them. The dream of managed capitalism on one continent became a laissez-faire nightmare—not laissez-faire in the sense of no rules, but rather rules structured to serve corporations and banks at the expense of workers and citizens. The fortress became a brig. There was plenty to criticize in the US response to the 2008 collapse—too small a stimulus, too much focus on deficit reduction, too little attention to labor policy, too feeble a financial restructuring—but by 2016, US unemployment had come back down to less than 5 percent. In Europe, it remained stuck at more than 10 percent, with all of the social dynamite produced by persistent joblessness.

Next time, next visit. Living a boy's adventure Tale.

Samsung watches gives orders to GmbH battery. In Time.

Egyetlen indikátora van annak, elhiszünk-e egy összeesküvés-elméletet: hogy egyébként milyen sok összeesküvés-elméletben hiszünk már. (...) A "Ha egyet elhiszel, mindet elhiszed" elv az összeesküvés-elméletek esetében abszurd következményekkel járhat. Viren Swami pszichológus a kutatásai alapján arra jutott, hogy akik elhiszik, hogy Diana hercegnőt meggyilkolták, azt is elhiszik, hogy a hercegnő csak eljátszotta a saját halálát. Diana tehát Schrödinger macskája az összeesküvés-elméletek világában: egyszerre halott és élő.

Soha nem leszünk képesek feloldani az ellentmondást, hogy minden, a világot jobbá tenni akaró gondolati irányzat elkerülhetetlenül magával hozza, hogy még több őrültség szabadul rá a világra. Mert a gondolatok vagy szabadok, vagy nem szabadok. Nincs köztes állapot.

A felvilágosodás az akkori "szakértők" ellen irányult: papok, püspökök, pápák ellen, akik nemcsak azt tudták, mi tartja össze legbelül a világot, hanem azt is, kinek hol a helye a társadalomban. (...) Ma a világot a felvilágosodás gyermekei magyarázzák el nekünk: tudósok, filozófusok, írók. Ők az új szakértők - akik ellen most éppen a felvilágosodás eszközeivel küzdenek az összeesküvés-elméletek hívei. Illetve: tudatosan félreértik a felvilágosodás eszközeit, hogy a maguk szolgálatába állíthassák őket. (...) A forradalom felfalja gyermekeit.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood,

Not only in private, but in politics, too.

Both Merkel and Obama read Yuval Harari’s somewhat ponderous Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind for pleasure. And though their tastes are widely different, both find escape and relaxation in music.

She was so pimped up in the whole situation.

The advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Fear is a bad advisor" -Chancellor Angela Merkel

Fear is a bad advisor

The growth of Israeli influence in Europe presents a curious historical milestone and an unresolved contradiction. After the annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust, Germany has become the most consistently pro-Israel nation on the continent and is Israel’s biggest trading partner in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Israel in October 2021 on one of her final overseas visits before leaving office; it was her eighth trip during her sixteen years in power. She did not travel to the West Bank or Gaza. She praised the Jewish state, despite acknowledging that Israel did not embrace her favored two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, but this did not matter because “the topic of Israel’s security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government.

Hinzu kommt, Sie haben das bestimmt gesehen, dass Kurt Westergaard* von Angela Merkel für seine Karikaturen gegen den Propheten persönlich ausgezeichnet und gelobt wurde. Shariah-rechtlich steht auf so eine Person die Todesstrafe. Dadurch stellt sich Ihre Regierung als Feind des Islam dar. *Dänischer Zeichner, dessen umstrittene Mohammed-Karikaturen 2005 von der dänischen Zeitung Jyllands-Posten veröffentlicht wurden

—El poder político es totalmente distinto —dijo tras una larga pausa—, nadie lo deja por gusto. No hay presidente gringo que no intente reelegirse para un segundo mandato, si es que tiene oportunidad. Álvaro Uribe en Colombia o Daniel Ortega en Nicaragua no han tenido empacho en forzar la legislación para estirar su gobierno; Putin o los Bush, cada uno con sus propias armas, buscan perpetuarse en el poder. Da lo mismo que sean de izquierda o de derecha. El sexo tampoco importa; Angela Merkel y Michelle Bachelet también quisieron extender su mandato.

What was I so enthusiastic about? The American Dream - The opportunity for everyone to success, to get somewhere by their own efforts, and like many teenagers, I was also a fan of a certain brand of jeans that couldn't be bought in the GDR, but I had an aunt in the west who used to send them to me. I loved the vast American landscapes, where the air is full of spirit of freedom and independence. In 1990 my husband and I flew to America for the very first time, to California. We will never forget that view of the Pacific Ocean. It was nothing short of magnificent.

Angela Merkel’s favorite statistic is that the European Union accounts for 7 percent of the world’s population, 25 percent of its GDP, and 50 percent of its social spending.12 But the politics of introducing change will be bloody, pitting cash-strapped governments that have to trim services against disgruntled voters who want to maintain their social rights, and taxpayers who want more value for their money against powerful public-sector unions that want to preserve their privileges.

At the G20 meeting in South Korea, China’s President Hu dug his toes in over some text in the communique President Obama needed politically on currency issues. I watched Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom execute a pincer movement, then he conceded. On Australia’s side of the ledger, tensions had risen when our government had eschewed the involvement of the Chinese company Huawei in building the NBN. We also risked Chinese ire by not stopping a fierce critic of China’s approach to human rights, a leader of the Uyghur ethnic group, from visiting Australia. China was also smarting about the price hikes they had experienced in coal and

Chancellor Angela Merkel attributed some of her own country’s decline in the second quarter to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, over which tit-for-tat sanctions threaten trade. The Munich-based Ifo, a research firm, echoed some of those sentiments as it reported its business climate index, based on a monthly survey of some 7,000 companies, fell to a worse-than-expected 106.3 from 108, the lowest level in more than a year.

If anything, the revelations about NSA spying on foreign leaders are less significant than the agency’s warrantless mass surveillance of whole populations. Countries have spied on heads of state for centuries, including allies. This is unremarkable, despite the great outcry that ensued when, for example, the world discovered that the NSA had for many years targeted the personal cell phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel. More remarkable is the fact that in country after country, revelations that the NSA was spying on hundreds of millions of their citizens produced little more than muted objections from their political leadership. True indignation came gushing forward only once those leaders understood that they, and not just their citizens, had been targeted as well.

Angela Merkel att den mångkulturella ideologin misslyckats totalt och varnade för ”invandring som drar ner våra sociala system”.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has taken the lead since the Ukraine crisis erupted. Somebody had to. And she has been widely praised for her role. This is puzzling because, despite numerous one-on-one conversations with Putin, Merkel has achieved nothing. Seen one way, her diplomacy has provided cover for ongoing Russian depredations. Last September's Minsk cease-fire agreement was ignored from day one.

Like Angela Merkel, Obama has a hell of a hard time saying no to the fossil fuel industry. And that’s a very big problem because to lower emissions as rapidly and deeply as required, we need to keep large, extremely profitable pools of carbon in the ground—resources that the fossil fuel companies are fully intending to extract.

Trump didn’t despise Obama. It was much, much stronger than that. I figured that Obama was the only person on the planet whom Trump actually envied—truly, madly, deeply. Air Force One, walking the carpet to deliver the State of the Union, the way Angela Merkel and other world leaders obviously admired and listened to Obama—it drove Trump out of his mind.

Dieselgate fed into a 180-degree turn in thinking that was in process about diesel fuel and urban transportation in Europe, where diesel cars have been popular. But anti-diesel sentiment was a big threat to Germany’s auto industry, which looms large in the country’s economy. German chancellor Angela Merkel decried the “demonizing” of diesel cars. Diesel, she said, was essential for combating climate change, owing to its lower CO2 emissions and greater fuel efficiency. She convened “diesel summits” to try to head off urban bans on diesel cars. But it was all to little avail. European cities, concerned about the higher levels of nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel, began to introduce limits for diesels. The aim for many is an eventual ban.

She looked at me, when she was fallen.

Angela Merkel has been disgraced because of Porn Hub.

Angela Merkel loves strawberry and Orange in space.

just as Angela Merkel’s willingness to absorb the tragic lessons of her own nation’s past made a difference.

women enrich life.

peace, democracy, freedom, trust, solidarity, the rule of law, friendly competition, respect, and tolerance.

Until more women become recognized as competent and reliable leaders, assuming roles of leadership will remain an uphill battle. By all means, draw inspiration from Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, business executive Carly Fiorina, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, or Carolyn Lamm (President of the American Bar Association), but remember that the majority of effective female leaders are neither rich nor famous. They’re just competent, devoted, and hard-working people, pretty much like you.

Hatred is not a crime.

In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft”—“There is strength in calm

Maskirovka (masquerade) is a technique developed by the Russian military in the early part of the last century that can be summarized by three words: deception, denial, and disinformation.

In Donetsk, a major industrial center, pro-Russian militia in camouflage and ersatz military gear stormed the local legislature, brandishing Soviet and czarist-era banners (with even a Confederate flag for added nostalgia).

Trained by the KGB to spread confusion and doubt, actual diplomacy was not part of the Russian’s repertoire.

As we shall see, for the rest of her life, the Shoah—as she [Angela Merkel] has always referred to the Holocaust—would be central to her leadership and to her conviction that Germany’s debt to the Jewish people was permanent.

We need to look unblinkered at the truth; the greater honesty we show, the freer we are to face the consequences. The root of the tyranny was Hitler’s immeasurable hatred of our Jewish compatriots. Hitler never concealed this hatred from the public but made the entire nation a tool of it.

A victory for the human race by 10 employees.

This also serves as a clever way of neutralizing potential opponents. “Angela is very skilled at appropriating any issue as soon as it gains traction,” said Gauck.

In Germany, the government appears to have at times adopted a more critical position towards Beijing, only to revert back to a more ‘business friendly’ stance. The CCP’s use of business to exert pressure here is essential to understanding why. When Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out a law blocking Huawei from Germany’s 5G network, Handelsblatt reported that she ‘feared a rift with China’.115 In 2018 the bilateral trade volume between the two countries was almost €200 billion, making China Germany’s largest trading partner for the third consecutive year. Chinese imports of German goods that year totalled €93 billion.116 Such has been the growth in Germany’s economic relations with China in recent years that it is now, of all the EU countries, the most dependent on China.

Although liberal by American standards, Europe’s biggest economies were almost all led by center-right governments, elected on the promise of balanced budgets and free-market reforms rather than more government spending. Germany, in particular—the European Union’s one true economic powerhouse and its most influential member—continued to see fiscal rectitude as the answer to all economic woes. The more I’d gotten to know Angela Merkel, the more I’d come to like her; I found her steady, honest, intellectually rigorous, and instinctually kind. But she was also conservative by temperament, not to mention a savvy politician who knew her constituency, and whenever I suggested to her that Germany needed to set an example by spending more on infrastructure or tax cuts, she politely but firmly pushed back. “Ya, Barack, I think maybe that’s not the best approach for us,” she would say, her face pulling into a slight frown, as if I’d suggested something a little tawdry

The growth of Israeli influence in Europe presents a curious historical milestone and an unresolved contradiction. After the annihilation of Jews in the Holocaust, Germany has become the most consistently pro-Israel nation on the continent and is Israel’s biggest trading partner in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Israel in October 2021 on one of her final overseas visits before leaving office; it was her eighth trip during her sixteen years in power. She did not travel to the West Bank or Gaza. She praised the Jewish state, despite acknowledging that Israel did not embrace her favored two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, but this did not matter because “the topic of Israel’s security will always be of central importance and a central topic of every German government.” It was an emotional connection, Merkel stressed, and one rooted in historical reconciliation and forgiveness. “The fact that Jewish life has found a home again in Germany after the crimes of humanity of the Shoah is an immeasurable sign of trust, for which we are grateful,” she wrote in the guest book at Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial

La pregunta no es si somos capaces de cambiar, sino si estamos cambiando con la suficiente rapidez. ANGELA MERKEL3

Named and shamed In December 2011 the main opposition party in Germany forced Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration to commission a parliamentary inquiry to investigate the political affiliations of former members of the West German government. It revealed the fact that one former premier, a chancellor and 25 cabinet ministers all had something to hide, namely that they had actively implemented Nazi policy during the Hitler years. Moreover, after the war these former Nazis had sought to cover their tracks by aligning themselves with parties which were not necessarily right-wing, nationalist or even conservative. The 85-page report became a bestseller and the furore prompted further searches into the archives held by other ministries, the police and also the West German intelligence agencies. The disclosures raised uncomfortable questions regarding the degree to which former Nazis might have influenced the post-war democratic government and its foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.

Merkel brought a set of core values to the office: her deep but private faith, an unshakable creed of duty and service; a belief in Germany’s permanent debt to Jews for what she has always referred to as the Shoah; her scientist’s devotion to precise, evidence-based decision-making; and a visceral loathing of dictators who imprison their own people. Freedom of expression and movement are more than hackneyed phrases for a politician who spent her first thirty-five years lacking both.

I can't see the problem.

. Even though nowadays you can say the words any way you like, some of them may at least give you pause: In the halcyon days of internecine tergiversation, a concupiscent chargé d'affaires at the Tanzanian consulate had the onerous assignment of arranging assignations amongst Zbigniew Brzezinski, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Deng Xiao Peng, Angela Merkel, and Dmitri Medvedev. “What a concatenation of blackguards,” expatiated this amanuensis, who was a bona fide dilettante. “It's a veritable farrago of inextricable idiosyncrasies. They will discuss laissez-faire, hypotenuses, synapses, kamikazes, Clio, Melpomene, Mnemosyne, and other such viragoes, before arriving, apocalyptically, at the dénouement. A priori, it is de rigueur that I not err, though embarrassed and harassed vituperatively by such vagaries.” Grasping

The bird has flown as in former days, more birds have flown.

De ontmoeting had iets weg van Donald J. Trump met Angela Merkel, daar niet van.

Некоторых так называемых людей следует убивать как бешенных собак.

Glasnost (literally ‘publicity’, but generally translated as ‘openness’),

Perestroika (‘ restructuring’) and Demokratizatsiya (‘ democratisation’).

Angela Merkel is invited to the Netherlands, to understand World War II.

Zij is niet de bedrijfseigenaar van Israël, ze houdt de zaak overeind.